


please don’t cry

by maketea



Series: fictober 2019 [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Crying, F/M, Fictober 2019, Hugging, Hurt/Comfort, give this girl a break, poor ladybug honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 01:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maketea/pseuds/maketea
Summary: chat noir tries taking a nap on the first patrol after he died.





	please don’t cry

**Author's Note:**

> fictober day 3: “now? now you listen to me?”

He had been asleep for awhile. 

Ladybug was always on his back for taking patrols seriously — she couldn’t shake the shame from that one time they showed up late to a battle. They had spent their patrol racing from chimney to chimney, and hadn’t realised they raced too far until they got an akuma alert — half an hour away from where they were.

But this was their first patrol after he—

No. She couldn’t think the words. She simply couldn’t think. After thirty hours, the smell of his blood still hung like fog over her brain.

Whether she thought about it or not, Ladybug decided Chat Noir deserved a patrol nap.

She turned around to look at him. He fell asleep lying on his stomach, hands under his head, but cheek still buried in the grass. Ladybug watched his back rise and fall as he breathed, and found herself letting one out of her own. If something had happened yesterday — if she failed, if Hawk Moth took her Miraculous, if her Miraculous Ladybug defied its job — Ladybug would be sitting alone. She would never have watched his body inflate, then deflate, never would have held her breath to listen to the sleepy wisps of his.

How could she have taken this for granted?

Chat Noir didn't shiver when the breeze picked up, even when a leaf caught in his hair. Without thinking, Ladybug reached over to take it out.

He stirred at her touch. “My Lady?”

“Ssh, it’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

Although she brushed the leaf out, Ladybug couldn’t bring herself to move her hand.

It was the first time she touched him since he died.

He didn’t need to die. She could’ve handled the akuma on her own. The automaton was enormous — Ladybug would have never guessed that an underpaid technician could get so angry — but she had a plan. As soon as the shadow of its giant iron foot came above her, she would have wrapped her yo-yo around its ankle and yanked it to the ground. 

But Chat Noir never listened — that stupid cat  _ never listened  _ — and pushed her out of the way. 

When she looked over her shoulder, he was a mess of cobblestone, blood, and twisted limbs.

The  _ Metro _ said she ran to him.  _ 20 Minutes  _ said she screamed.  _ CNews  _ said she fell to her knees and bawled. 

She remembered none of that. But she did remember swallowing back her vomit, grasping for any part of him she could, trying to put him back together like she’d done to her felt dolls so many times until her red and black hands were just red. 

The newspapers left all of that out.

Her fingers trembled in his hair. “You scared me yesterday.”

He blinked up at her groggily, but couldn’t keep his eyes open for long. The sun had begun to set, leaving the sky orange and pink and a gold too bright to meet head on.

“I-I thought you were behind me,” she whispered shakily. He opened his eyes. “I thought you pushed me out of the way and came with me — you know, like usual? Like you usually do? When you land on top of me and smile and I push you off and—” Ladybug put a hand over her mouth. “You were on the ground. And I kept calling you and calling you but you just didn’t wake up.” Her grip tightened in his hair. “How could you have done that to me?”

“My Lady…”

“How  _ could  _ you?” she spat out of her fingers, pushing them harder against her lips as if that’d stop her talking. “D-Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand how t-terrifying that was for me?” She shivered. His blood had been so hot. “You died. You left me.”

He turned onto his side to look at her. “I’m still here.”

“But what if you weren’t?” she panted. “Because that could’ve been it. I would’ve gone insane. I thought you left me and you were  _ dead _ and the one person whom I thought would never ever leave me left and—” The words spilled out uncontrollably. Maybe this was the aftermath of the nausea she’d been feeling all day. 

“I did it for—”

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare say you did it for me. You  _ broke _ me.” Her voice cracked. “You made me see your—your  _ body _ . Would you be able to do that, if it was me? What if I was the one crushed up and bleeding everywhere?”

“Don’t.”

“Because I can make sure that happens. You think you’re the only one that can die?”

“Don’t.” Chat Noir clenched his jaw, and his eyes turned wide; frantic. “That’s enough, Ladybug.”

“How do you think I felt, when I had to actually see you like that?” she said. Then, quietly, “I can’t—I can’t stop thinking about how you looked… and the blood… and… and you were gone…”

Tears streaked her cheeks, just as they did when she bent over his corpse and cried until her voice died away, too.

“God, it hurts,” she gasped, and clutched her chest. “So much.”

Ladybug tipped her head back to the dimming sky. She sobbed to the sunset, digging her fist into her sternum and feeling the nausea, an old friend, returning to the pit of her stomach. 

She jerked her arm away when he touched it. But then Chat Noir tugged on it, pulled her to the grass, wrapped his arms around her convulsing body and held her while she cried.

“I’ll never do that again,” he said against her hair. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry.”

“Now? Now you listen to me?” she said.

“I never wanted to hurt you. That’s the last thing I ever wanted to do.”

She grabbed at his arms, curled herself into them, cried against his heartbeat and his body temperature and the pulse thrumming all over him. 

“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered. “I can’t handle it.”

“Never.” He hugged her tighter. “I’m right here. I always will be.”

◦◦,`°.✽✦✽.◦.✽✦✽.°`,◦◦

Chat Noir woke up to a sky much darker than the one he fell asleep to. On one side of his eyes, the street lamps glowed behind the trees. On the other side of his eyes was Ladybug. She hadn’t moved since he fell asleep again, and judging by his numb arm below her neck, he hadn’t either. 

Slowly, he pulled himself free, propped himself onto an elbow, and loomed over her. She slept quietly, breaths unsteady with a few sporadic sniffles. 

The breeze picked up. It was his turn to pull the leaf out of her hair. He pressed his lips to where it landed, and told her, “I’m so sorry.”


End file.
